Have you decided which metrics matter to your business before installing analytics? Or are you planning to install a tracking code and figure out what to measure afterward? Most teams do the second. They install first and discover six months later that they never set up the right metrics. They're measuring traffic but not conversions. They're tracking clicks but not revenue. They're collecting data without knowing what questions they're trying to answer.
This article walks through the setup checklist you need to complete before installing any tracking code. It covers business goals, key metrics, account structure, and data organization so your analytics system answers questions instead of just collecting numbers.
Define your business goals first
What does success look like for your website? Is it collecting email addresses? Generating sales? Getting people to call? Building awareness? Different goals require different tracking. You need to know the answer before you install anything.
Write down three to five primary goals. Be specific. Not "increase traffic." Write "increase qualified leads by 20 percent." Not "improve engagement." Write "increase average session duration to three minutes." The more specific your goal, the more directly you can measure progress toward it.
Assign a number to each goal. How much revenue do you need to generate? How many leads? How many social media followers? If you can't measure it, you can't track progress.
Identify the metrics that show progress toward each goal
For each goal, what metric shows you're moving in the right direction? If your goal is to increase sales, your metric is revenue or number of purchases. If your goal is to build email list, your metric is email signups. If your goal is customer retention, your metric is repeat purchase rate.
Write down the metric for each goal and the current baseline. If you don't know the baseline, estimate it. You'll measure the actual number once analytics is live.
Some goals need multiple metrics. If your goal is to increase sales, you might track conversion rate, average order value, and total revenue. Track the metric that directly connects to the goal, not proxy metrics that might be related but aren't the real thing.
Plan your account structure before setup
Most analytics platforms organize data into accounts, properties, and views. Accounts contain properties. Properties contain data. Views filter that data. If you set this up wrong, you'll either have data you can't analyze or no data at all.
Decide whether you need one account or multiple accounts. Most businesses use one account for the main website and one for internal testing. Separate accounts prevent test data from mixing with real data.
Decide how many properties you need. If you have one website, one property. If you have multiple subdomains or domains, you might need multiple properties. If you have an app and a website, they need separate properties.
Decide what views you need. You might need a view of all traffic, a view of only paid traffic, a view with internal traffic filtered out. Plan these before setup so you don't have to reconfigure later.
Choose what you'll track and what you won't
You can track almost everything. Clicks, form submissions, video plays, scroll depth, every page view. But tracking everything creates noise. Data overload makes it harder to find what matters.
Write down what actions on your site show that someone is moving toward one of your goals. If your goal is sales, track product page views, add to cart, and purchase. If your goal is lead generation, track form views, form submissions, and contact page visits. If your goal is email signup, track email signup forms and confirmation pages.
Ignore everything else for now. You can add more tracking later. Start with the metrics that directly connect to your goals.
Plan your naming conventions before creating tracking
How will you name your pages, events, and data? Will page names include the full URL or just the page name? Will events be named in camelCase or snake_case? Will you include the section name in the event name?
Write down your naming rules. Use them consistently from day one. If you name one event "purchase" and another "productPurchase" and another "checkout_complete," you'll spend months cleaning up inconsistent data.
Keep names simple and descriptive. A name should tell you what the page or event is without having to look it up. "Thank you page" is better than "page_3." "Video play" is better than "vp."
Identify who needs access to what
Who on your team will need to access analytics? The marketing team? The sales team? The data analyst? Each person needs different access levels. The person who can create new events shouldn't be the same person who can delete reports.
Write down who needs access to what. Does your developer need to modify tracking code? Does your marketing manager need to create reports? Does your CEO need view-only access to the dashboard? Set up user roles before inviting people.
Plan for testing before going live
You need a way to test your analytics before it goes to real visitors. Most platforms have a development environment or staging mode. You might create a separate view just for test data. You need a way to validate that tracking code works before thousands of real visitors generate noise.
Plan how you'll test. Will you use internal traffic filters? Will you create a staging environment? Will you add test data manually? Have a testing plan before you install tracking code.
Frequently asked questions
Should we set up analytics tracking for our entire website or start with specific pages?
Install tracking on the entire website from day one. If you only track specific pages, you'll miss traffic that doesn't hit those pages. You'll also create blind spots that are hard to fix later. Install globally, then filter the data into views that focus on what matters. Universal tracking lets you answer questions later that you didn't think to ask today. With WEMASY's website builder, you can set this up directly on your website.
Our company has three main business goals. Do we need three separate analytics accounts?
No. Use one account with multiple properties or multiple views. One account holds everything. Properties organize by website or app. Views filter data. Most teams use one account for their production website and one for testing. Keep it simple unless you have multiple unrelated websites with completely separate data needs.
We're not sure what metrics to track. Should we just install analytics and see what's available?
No. Set up goals and metrics first. If you install analytics without knowing what you're measuring, you'll collect lots of data that doesn't answer your questions. You'll need to reconfigure later. Spend two hours now planning what to track. Save yourself two weeks of setup later.
Should we filter out our internal traffic from analytics?
Yes. Create a view that filters out your company's IP address and traffic from your employees. You want to measure real visitors, not your team testing the site. Keep one unfiltered view of all traffic for reference, but use the filtered view for decision-making. Internal traffic skews your metrics.
How detailed should our naming conventions be before setup?
Detailed enough that anyone reading the name understands what the page or event is. Page names might look like: Product Page - Widget, Blog Post - How to Use. Event names might look like: Video Play, Form Submit, Add to Cart. Write down 5 to 10 examples of what your names will look like. If your team agrees those examples are clear, your convention is ready.
We have multiple websites. Should we create separate analytics accounts for each one?
Only if the websites are completely separate businesses with different owners and different data needs. If they're part of the same company and you want to see combined data, use one account with multiple properties. If they're separate companies or have no shared ownership, separate accounts are cleaner. Most multi-site businesses use one account with multiple properties.